How do I break out of an endless loop of "Please update conda by running $ conda update -n base -c conda-forge conda"

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I issue the command “conda update -n base -c conda-forge conda”

Terminal on Mac returns some output, then states, “Please update conda by running $ conda update -n base -c conda-forge conda”

It’s an endless loop. If you can help me update conda and break out of that loop, I’d be grateful.

I checked out ChrisBarker-NOAA’s post here, discussing problems with updating environments, but my main issue is not being able to update to the latest version of conda, due to the endless loop. His post is here: Updating miniconda with conda-forge conda and priority: strict

My current version is 4.14.0. I’m trying to upgrade to 23.9.0.

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There are two things at play here:

  • The notification of a new conda version being available
  • The behaviour of conda update conda

The former simply checks whether there’s a more recent version available, using the currently running one as a reference.

The latter will try to get the latest conda version installable for that environment. If conda update conda does nothing, it means you are currently running the latest installable version.

How do we figure out what’s holding the solver back? With an explicit request:

conda install conda=23.9.0

This should tell you what’s holding your environment back. Specially if you are using solver: libmamba as default. With solver: classic the errors might not be as informative.

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